


burn the straw house down

by slybrunette



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-16
Updated: 2011-03-16
Packaged: 2017-10-17 01:05:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slybrunette/pseuds/slybrunette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>they can go ten rounds or she can stand by the door, arms crossed and indifference on her face, but it all ends the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	burn the straw house down

They can go ten rounds or she can stand by the door, arms crossed and indifference on her face, but it all ends the same.

He left. He’s leaving. It’s just the tenses that keep changing.

She never figured out how to change, not really. She lost her eyebrows to his mother and she lost herself to Owen and now that she’s got it all back she’s got a resolution that’s going to last far longer than one month in January. She’s going to hold her ground and she’s going to make him look her in the eye before he can flee this time.

There are suitcases that were never fully unpacked to start with by the door, keeping her company along with the hesitant _this was a mistake_ that rolled off of his lips twenty minutes ago, playing on a loop in her head. They made it a handful of weeks, since her ill-advised phone call to a number she knew she shouldn’t have even had and his admission that he had missed her, badly.

They didn’t fight for it. They just fell into it. His hands fit along her body the way they always had and it was just easier to go and go and go and not stop, not think about what this all means. Cristina’s never found the time for that.

Maybe she should’ve because they ran out of gas.

They didn’t fight for it and they didn’t talk about it and now he’s got one foot out the door again and she’s determined not to care, much less give ground.

“This was a mistake,” he’d repeated, and she had given a single nod of her head, in time with the sound of the other shoe dropping.

“Fine, then. I won’t stand in your way.”

And she hasn’t, she’s given him a wide berth as he moves through the rooms in the apartment she bought when she traded marriage for something she could handle, chose herself over the needs of a demanding man, and for the times his feet have stuttered to a stop on the carpet, in doorways and hallways, looking back at her as if he expects her to say _something_ , she offers him a shrug.

“We didn’t earn it,” she says, when he’s got his jacket on.

“No, we didn’t,” he concedes, quietly. He’s quieter now, reserved. Part of her thinks he’s trying not to hurt her, that he’s trying to make up for what he did and all the things she’s been through tenfold, but it’s not his place and it’s not what she wants. He’d know that if he asked.

He never asked. Neither did she.

It’s the last thing he says. No goodbye. He walks out the door with his suitcase and his duffel bag and she closes it behind him, solid, firm.

One of these days, they’ll get it right. One of these days, they’ll learn.


End file.
